Need
information about NEWMONIA? Has your physician warned you about HIPERTENSION?
Bothered by a lingering, mysterious COFF? Maybe you have it, but just
cant spell it. If thats the case, a new interactive search
mechanism built into the NIH (National Institutes of Heath) website may
be just the remedy you need.

The new medical "spell
-check" was the brainchild of Dennis Rodriguez, an information technology
specialist at NIH who, in 1991, developed the organizations first
electronic bulletin board. When NIHs public website appeared, Rodriguez
says it "became very apparent that standard search technology was
unforgiving when it came to spelling errors."

Rodriguez and his
web development team spent hours examining search logs and tracing the
frustration of users who attempted time and time again to gain access
to the site but whose spelling errors kept them out of the system. Rodriguez
knew that most computers had some kind of spell-check function. The challenge
for NIH was to build a component that could interface successfully with
the configuration of the larger website. The results can be seen at http://search.nih.gov.

The spell-check component
Rodriguez and his team added to the NIH website is a first in the world
of electronic information sharing. While there are medical glossaries
available on the internet and medical "dictionaries" online,
a spell-check function targeting complex medical terms had yet to be designed.
When the NIH prototype appeared in February 2000, web developers and masters
at NIH realized immediately that there was no turning back.

Today, hundreds of
users are accessing NIHs medical spellchecker on a regular basis,
and developers report most of the comments received from the public are
positive. Not all the kinks, they admit, are gone. When users key in a
term phonetically, (MELLANOMMA, for instance) a long list of similarly
spelled terms can pop up -- small help for someone without the medical
expertise you need to know the difference between a "melanoma,"
a "melanomata," and a "melanism."

Dennis Rodriguez
knows the spell-check mechanism isnt perfect. He says efforts are
underway to test the present system, survey users, and discover ways of
building "natural language search interfaces" and other devices
that can engage the user in an actual dialogue and direct him or her to
what is most likely to be an ideal response.

A user, for example,
might key in "pain." The computer would then query "back
pain?" or "migraine?" and depending on user response, direct
the inquirer to the most appropriate site. "We want to refine the
system," says Rodriguez, "compare what we have to the most advanced,
interactive search technology, and decide where we want the next iteration
of the medical spell-checker to take us."

If you have any doubts
about the development of "the next generation" of medical spell-checkers,
go to the experts. They are Sandra Desautels, the technical project leader,
Harpreet Sayal, the projects lead programmer, Anh Le, who tested
the server, Eric Noriega and Ginny Vinton, both responsible for integration
of the system, and ask them what they have planned for the future. Theyll
tell you that as good as the current model may be, tomorrows spell-checker
is going to offer even greater access to a broader population of users.

Soon you wont
have to be a physician, or a health practioner, or even a decent speller
to understand all too well what ails you. Type in "groans, bones
and stones," and you might just come up with a diagnosis you can
take with you to the family doctor. Who will probably be online in his
office as well.

For More Information

For more information
about the NIH medical spell-checker, contact Dennis Rodriguez at dr3p@nih.gov